The Story of the Ghost

A few days ago, an Indianapolis-based freelance writer issued a post on her blog on the topic of ghostblogging. She refers to herself as a writer, ghost blogger and social media rock star. In her post, she defended the practice of ghostblogging and rejected claims that her work is unethical, inauthentic and outright lying.

I happen to agree with her and provided my two cents on the subject by commenting on her blog. Another local PR practitioner was so adamant that ghostblogging is equal to lying that she proceeded to blog about it herself and even issued a tweet that her post would render myself and this ghostblogger “speechless.” Hardly. The debate continued all day on Twitter with dozens jumping into the debate, some with humor, some with support of one side or the other, and some begging for the whole thing to stop.

The fact that there is a debate at all indicates to me that this is a gray area. It’s not as black and white as some would like to believe.

I conducted some research on the issue and rather than try to create some impassioned post myself, please see this post by Jason Falls: "The Ethics of Ghost Blogging." I agree with his thoughts on the subject 100%. I don’t think I can say it any better—especially the four bullet points at the end of his post. Another Indy-based blogger wrote an equally interesting post on the subject ("Making the Argument for Ghost Blogging. Yet Again.") that sums up my opinions on the subject well.

What do you think? And please consider, that the term "ghostblogger" isn’t the issue, the issue is writing on behalf of your clients and/or employer and the appropriate degree/relevance of disclosure that writing services were provided (at least that’s how I see it).

Comments

[Elizabeth Friedland]

I love PR. I really do. It honestly, at this point, breaks my heart that our industry has the bad wrap that it does. So many people look on public relations as a big scam that "spins" to the public, tells half-truths, hide behind skewed logic and conducts quasi-ethical violations to achieve their goal.

Let's face it. "Flack," "spin doctor," -- these are the nicknames for us, and they're not flattering.

The PRSA has a really robust section of its Web site devoted to ethics, and I spent a good deal of time reading through it last night. The Statement of Professional Values, under "honesty" reads:

"We adhere to the highest standards of accuracy and truth in advancing the interests of those we represent and in communicating with the public."

The Code of Provisions continues:

"A member shall... be honest and accurate in all communications, avoid deceptive practices, build trust with the public by revealing all information needed for responsible decision making and build respect and credibility with the public."

Because ghost blogging says a blog is from one author when in fact it was written by someone else, thereby not being honest as to who wrote what, it deceives the public.

I have no doubt that with some "creative" logic, we can come up with a way to justify this. (Some arguments I've heard: Our clients are busy, bad writers, this is just like copywriting, the public wouldn't care anyway, this doesn't really matter, etc.)

But... why? It's so, so, so easy to give proper, accurate, honest credit. Let's continue to uphold the PRSA ethical guidelines and demand 100% honesty and accuracy in EVERY piece of communication we're involved in.

Personally speaking, I would flat-out refuse to be associated with an agency or client who felt otherwise. Yes, it's easy to justify our actions to make ourselves sleep better at night, and sure, ghost blogging isn't, in the grand scheme of things, a huge ethical violation. But if we start to turn our head at the small violations, we're heading down a slippery slope.

Let's be better than that.

[Ryan Puckett]

I do not believe one has to get "creative" to justify writing on a client or employer's behalf, nor does it violate this provision: "A member shall... be honest and accurate in all communications, avoid deceptive practices, build trust with the public by revealing all information needed for responsible decision making and build respect and credibility with the public."

Because helping somebody write, edit, craft or distribute their work is "honest and accurate" unless the words or message you provide are dishonest and inaccurate.

Because helping somebody write, edit, craft, distribute their work is not a deceptive practice.

Because helping somebody write, edit, craft, distribute their work can actually help them built trust with the public AND ensures that they reveal all information needed for their publics to make responsible decisions.

Because helping somebody write, edit, craft or distribute their work helps them build respect and credibility with their various "publics."

Our industry does get a bad rap from time to time for unethical practices, even for plain 'ol stupid behavior. It bothers me as much as it bothers any member of PRSA or a practitioner with ethical standards.

However, I do not believe it is the practice of writing, editing, distributing, or "ghostblogging" -- when done correctly -- violates this ethical standard nor any other.

[Robby Slaughter]

It really depends on the expectations of the audience. Nobody cares who actually wrote the slogan printed on the side of a coffee cup. Most people don't care which speechwriter wrote the President's last address. Some people get excited when a letter or blog post is written, co-written, edited or inspired by a third party without attribution. Using a ghostwriter for your personal love poetry: definitely a bad move.

I think this is a matter of audience perception, not ethics. The PRSA Code of Ethics doesn't even demand 100% honesty: it merely states that members should "avoid deceptive practices" (emphasis added.) Perhaps a more insightful passage is the instruction to "preserve the free flow of unprejudiced information when giving or receiving gifts by ensuring that gifts are nominal, legal, and infrequent."

(For an ironclad alternative, check the Code of Ethics from the Society of Professional Journalists, which states that professionals "should refuse gifts, favors, fees, free travel and special treatment.")

Summary: if you're a PR pro, avoid being deceptive and only give out freebies if you can argue they aren't a big deal. So if PR pros are worried that ghostwriting might be construed as deceptive, that's ok: you're just supposed to avoid it. If you're worried that information flow might be prejudiced by the "gift" of notoriety bequeathed without attribution, just be sure you can rationalize that it's "nominal and infrequent."

I'm being pretty hard on PR here, but not because I think PR is evil. PR is great! Rather, I think there's an obvious attempt to play both sides of the fence. Standing up to insist that ghostwriting is always dishonest seems pretty silly from an industry whose Code of Ethics permits deception and bribery (as long as they are generally avoided, nominal and rationalized.) Why not add some kinds of ghostwriting to the list of exceptions?

[Rodger D. Johnson]

You know, Robby makes a good point. The Code for us PR pros seems to gives little wiggle room for being dishonest, sometimes. But I still hold that ghost blogging is just like ghostwriting. We don't think ghostwriting is misleading, do we?

[Cindy Dashnaw]

Every PR person I know has written for someone else’s signature―a letter from the president for a newsletter, a letter to the editor or a thank-you note to a donor or dissatisfied customer are common examples. And we all, including those in the glass houses, sleep just fine at night.

The issue here seems to be the medium: Since it’s blogging, it’s supposed to be above such things.

Why?

If we as message crafters don’t want our audiences to read a letter from the CEO because she can’t write well or he won’t communicate what he really wants to say, then why should we treat his/her blog any differently?

Or, to look at it another way, if we’re not genuinely communicating our CEO’s voice in print, but we are in a blog, why are we making a distinction?

We’re fooling ourselves if we think most people reading the president’s letter in the newsletter don’t believe the CEO wrote it. They do.

So who’s a liar now?

[Elizabeth Friedland]

Again, I agree with Cindy and Ryan that writing for our clients is great, totally ethical and even encouraged. But we just need to give credit to the proper author(s), whomever that may be.

[Rodger]

Elizabeth, I think you're missing the larger point here. When I wrote articles for my CEO, he got all the credit. In the public eye, I got no credit.

The only credit I got was the satisfaction of knowing my CEO was published in ABC magazine. Giving credit to me would not have made sense. It's the same with ghost blogging. If I'm writing about X product for X company on its corporate blog, and the CEO's byline shows and not mine, its the same thing as writing for my CEO and placing that article in ABC magazine. The only change is the medium; one is print, the other electronic.